Shhh, IBM forms big new business intelligence consulting arm

Let's see, what to write about? Ashton Kutcher beats CNN to become first Twitter millionaire (if a million followers makes you a millionaire)? How about frumpy Scottish songstress Susan Boyle making those aloof Brits teary eyed and getting 12 million YouTube hits? Or maybe the much less Entertainment Weekly attractive, but big deal in the business to business marketplace of IBM giving birth to a full grown Business Intelligence organization?

While it was fun twittering (and you can follow me @ESLundquist ) about the Kutcher and Boyle upsets of big media and glamour singers, in the biz to biz world where I toil, the IBM news is a big deal. And I think the general overbearing coverage of the social nets (and I plead guilty here) masks lots of fundamental changes and opportunities in the business world.

BusinessWeek did a good job at giving the 5Ws and the H of the IBM announcement. In my summary, I'd say IBM Senior VP Frank Kern has drawn from the Global Business Services unit, IBM research and IBM acquisitions to create a long winded organization named IBM Business Analytics and Optimization Services. In the B2B market, IBM has a good track record of doing the right thing at the right time and coming up with a name and description that makes it hard to decipher they are doing the right thing.

While the tech journalists (still including myself here) and general media  can get very worked up about the new FaceBook redesign, the Google location technology or Tweetups in general, we can miss the business of business.

Despite some signs of spring, the general economy still sucks. The companies that will come out of the downturn are those that can keep old and find new customers, not order too much or too little inventory and can keep from getting ripped off or scammed.

When you strip out all the talk about business regression analysis, statistical forecasting and terminology that only a math major can love, you'll find that business intelligence helps companies measure and manage the boss's biz strategy.

While IBM has been getting knocked of late for shipping jobs overseas and has never, in my memory, been seen as a low cost provider, the company does well at sending its execs out on the road to constantly talk with customers. Maybe that is their secret. You send your execs out to talk to customers, those Big Blue execs come back and say what the customers want and IBM builds products and services to fit those needs. Could it be that simple?

If the new BI group can act as a connecting point between the services arm, the research arm and the recent acquisitions, they just might be able to continue to roll up those big customer sales.